I’ve been creating quite a bit of noise around this competition. First off, I din’t win the Wedding Photographer of the Year 2012 competition. I won a category (Couple Portraiture) out of six categories, to qualify to be in the top six to fight for the “Wedding Photographer of the Year 2012”. Thats it !

To be one of the 6 finalists among 24,000 entries was a big ego massage. And to hang out with this eclectic bunch of photographers in Mumbai was a learning. Well, We also did have our fair share of craziness and fun in Mumbai.

Vivek won the Wedding Photographer of the Year 2012 competition.

Along with the category win came a lot of visibility in various media. Some more ego massage. Some of the prominent ones were the WeddingSutra Blog and the CNBC TV coverage along with Better Photography publishing the images.

Watch the video below. A short edit on CNBC about your’s truly and the “shoot” experiences in Mumbai. I was cringing while watching the video’s myself. A strange experience watching oneself on TV !

If you have survived this long in this blog, by now you would be thinking “Man, This dude is so full of it”. And you won’t be completely wrong.

I remember another photographer saying the following

…”I believe that a contest is purely subjective. It depends on the mood of the judges and lot of other variables.. It can become a little bit corrupting. Photographers spend inordiate amount of time trying to impress other photographers. But there is an interesting duality within humans/photogrphers. On one hand I put out a photo, and I think “Aww its my baby, I love it, I am so proud of this photo, its very meaningful to me” and “I don’t care what people think of it as its important to me” and the other half of me is like “Oh my god I hope people like it”. Both of these things are very strong. You both really want people to like your photos and you don’t care if people like it. Its strange that both of these can be true. Yet they are complete opposites. I think the balance of duality is important. I think having a delicate sensitive balance is important for any artist. “